Photo Book Reviews: Smilebox, Shutterfly, Winkflash

Even when I'm shopping for a gift, I love to get a deal. I also like finding personalized gifts that I can made with photos. What is great about these gifts is that once you have made one photo album father's day gift or other occasion, you can change a few of the photos and captions to give it to your niece who is graduation, grandma for her birthday, and Uncle Mike for Christmas. You can even change the whole style of the book but keep the photos and other text the same. Don't forget to order one for yourself too. Another idea is using those same photos you uploaded for other gifts, like a photo tie for dad (Snapfish), a calendar for your college grad to take with them to school, or a special mug as a thank you gift for teachers.

Most of these photo sites continually offer great deals and I'm going to keep this site updated regularly with all the latest offers, so check back often to get the best deals.

So here are the best deals I've found so far for Father's Day Gifts and Graduation gifts. I'll be updating and adding to the list as I find new deals!

Shutterfly: As usual, Sutterfly has some of the best deals around. Not to mention that they always deliver top-quality merchandise. I know from experience that they let you use several codes on one order. Check out their website for the latest deals. Shutterfly has the very best quality of mechandise and their photobooks are especially well done. The photos always come out with beautiful color. They let you edit the photos on each page so that you can eliminate red-eye, crop them and even change them to black and white, sepia (brownish tones) or make the pictures more vivid. Shutterfly also works great for digital scrapbooks. If you make an album with all one picture pages, you can just put in your digital scrapbooking pages instead of a picture. I do this all the time. You can use Smilebox to make a photo album at Shutterfly easily that way.

Shutterfly offers deals so often that I often make an album and then wait for a deal to come up. If you sign up for their site, they will also send you emails with extra deals. I've also found lots of free albums from Travelocity (when I wrote a review for their site they gave me a free album), Lifetouch (when I ordered school pictures they gave me a free album--worth more than the pictures I ordered), and software (when my daughter got her new computer, the Adobe Elements Software included a free Shutterfly album). So watch out for these special deals. Once Shutterfly sent me a coupon for a free album via email, so that is another incentive to sign up with them.

Desktop Calendar: One of my favorite Shutterfly gifts is their desktop calendar. I gave these to everyone at Christmas and the quality is top-notch with thick paper and great printing of the photos. This can be a great way to honor dad or a graduate--maybe start the calendar at the date they are going off to school with a picture of favorite places at home? Their family and friends who are wishing them the best? Pictures of them growing up to show friends?

Photo Gifts: Shutterfly has an assortment of other photo gifts on sale all the time. Go to the site to see the latest deal on Mugs, aprons, T-shirts, desk organizers, costers and stationary sets.

Winkflash: Winkflash quality is not quite up to Shutterfly but they offer some of the very best deals on stretched canvas photos. Frequently, they offer 60% off! Canvas enlargements are easy to hang because they don't require a frame, and they look nicer on a wall than just a large photo. We often think about a canvas being a picture of a family or a family reunion and those are great uses, but there are other ways to use a canvas photo as a gift. How about giving dad a picture of his favorite fishing spot or his first car? You could give grandpa a picture of his Harley or his garden. Maybe Uncle Jason doesn't have kids. You could give him a picture of his dog, his favorite toy as a kid or his favorite vacation spot. Of course Grandma would love a picture of her grandkids, but she also might like a picture of her favorite flowers instead of a bouquet. Be creative!

Winkflash very frequently has their Flatrate photo book sale going on. This is a fabulous way to make a large album at a reasonable price. They let you have an album with 100 pages for the price of a 20 page album! Usually, the code offer is ALLBOOKS. Don't worry if you don't see the code discount until the final checkout. This is a great way to get a 100 page book for $16.00 to $40.00 depending on the size you choose. I usually make a Winkflash book when I have a large group of Smilebox pictures I want to put together in an album. However, like Shutterfly, Winkflash also lets you make up your own album right on the site with a variety of backrounds and styles available. Another fun thing about Winkflash is that they let you put a photo or scrapbook page on the cover, so your cover can be personalized.

Smilebox is one of my favorite sites for making all sort of free emailed invitations, scrapbooks, slideshows and more. Not only can you include lots of photos, but you can also put short videos right in the slideshow or scrapbook. They let you email these to anyone in your email box (or everyone!) for free. You can also post these right into Facebook or even your blog site. I sent out a letter for Christmas, but I also posted it on Facebook for people to see that I didn't get a mail version to right away. Sometimes the selection of styles is limited but Smilebox is adding new designs every week. What is absolutely the best thing about Smilebox is how easy it is to make an album. What they do better than other sites is have the design work done right on your computer so that you don't have to choose and upload the pictures first. Instead, you download the design, quickly choose the pictures right out of your folders and then put everything together on your desktop. It is so easy to do that my kids started making their own Smilebox creations when they were in Kindergarten. Another bonus is that all the creations look fantastic. You can join for free for a 14 day trial and there is no cost for as many downloads and prints as you want. To continue your membership is about $30 a year. I think it is well worth it to be able to download and print or make your creations into a DVD, especially since your kids can use this to make gifts too. However, you don't have to pay anything to view it digitally and email it to people. Sometimes they offer free designs and you can also buy a single design for a couple of dollers. Smilebox is a great deal and a fun website. Have your kids make some scrapbooks to keep them busy this summer! It is free and fun!